It was a cultural thing: the Nookumboos wantedthe moon's asbestosa glimpse of something infinitelike the President's addressand pieces of my own excrement.Cuddlelips loved looking “exactly like a kumquat" . . .

and needed a huge vat of penicillin just to clean her monkey. I greeted Mushyboobie’s mother by screaming, "Afternoon, penis!” ...

with my lips on “Missy Dolly,”the obese proboscis monkey. As usual "Walter" was still Walter —

a bone from the penis of a walrus,a gift perfectly suitablefor anyone named Mao. But Brett Favre? ...

Revolutionary?With his penis in a zipper?

Then came the monkey penis fights ...

with Andres Serrano impersonators ...

testes hanging out of spangled lamé jumpsuits.It’s too bad the monkey penises got mangled by all those Lovecraftian references.My own penis remains a locus of cheeky brassy monkeys.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Hot Tuna Fantasy Camp Panties

When I think of hot panties, I think of 3 things:pirates, the Rock, and vodka.I recall seeing Jerry Lee Lewis putting on a pair of panties tossed at,oddly enough,the members of Hot Tuna.

Well in Miami they still do that -- but without panties

* * *

When I lay between my two aunts (father’s side)the younger always made sure I was around when she changed her panties.I once wore her granny panties and wound up in an accidentwith a chocolate milk child imprint on my smokin’ hot outfit

I don't care about and don't wear pantiesI just thought this was greatest song ever writtenand she sure seems hot to me cuz she cries every timewomen who want to feel sexy, special and individual wear pistol panties

From "Sic Transit" (6)

And so on a trip to the gambling boat — a yeasty, floating oasis known locally as "Shitty Vegas" — as I played the three of spades on the first of May, it came to me that I'd made a Faustian bargain for emotional comfort, and that I would live to regret it. Experience may be its own reward (and punishment), but the fall into the field of Time is humanity in its natural element. Within days it became obvious that change lay in the past, and the present would contain nothing less than stasis.

But perhaps the good thing about blandness is that although sorrow ages one to some degree, malaise renders one ageless.

Last week on the street I met up with C again. He was with a girlfriend. Little kids flying by on bikes seemed to frighten them. He made fun of my clothes again, but this time it was because I was wearing black.

Holy Mother of Monkey Poo

There is really no way to dance around the delightof a week of eating nothing but monkey food.It's like one of those '70s TV movies about teensexcept instead of Annie taking drugsor Joe delving into radical politicsit's a human trying to live off nothing but monkey food.

Day 2: Poo pretty smelly.

Day 3: Moderate desire to fling poo.

Day 4: Poo succinct, but deep.

Day 5: Munchies galore!

Day 6: Spotted a macaroni, a tasty pastry and some pre-prepared panini in my poo

From "Sic Transit" (5)

But against my better judgement we got back together a year later, at the Beat Reunion Reading at the downstate university. We snuck off to an unused classroom to fuck, and afterward argued, first about his inability to take punctuation lightly, and then about how I was too immature to fulfill my own destiny — he had me believing we'd had that past life together as Jews in Nazi Germany. I hurled a small desk at his head. Allen Ginsberg heard the ruckus and burst in and yelled at us.

Our final break came a month later, when I telephone him from the Step-Hi Lounge to say I wasn't pregnant. Indignant at being made to fret falsely, even for a second, he said it served me right for making fun of the Feast of the Assumption — he'd suddenly become Catholic. When he began ranting about the threat of hell I hung up and stumbled out, dazed by the wide, bright boulevard. These streets expect too much of me, I thought. I can't fulfill the demands of these happy avenues. In Woolworth's cafeteria I ordered a bowl of Fruit Loops. They must've been tainted by a trace of the ancient ergotism plague, because on the way home I hallucinated the triple fish Toastmaster logo in the shaded arcades. But once that crisis passed I felt relieved.

And for a few weeks I was free, free enough to finally rid myself of C by employing a ritual bath using a ewer full of water from the Sherman Park lagoon, a drop of oil of vitriol, and a pilfered undertaker's tool. I stirred the lagoon water and the oil with the tool, and intoned the ancient hymn of praise to Pluto. After an hour the sun moved behind clouds and the light through the frosted airshaft window faded and I knew my wish would be granted. But in the intervening years I've come to believe that something worse happened. It hadn't occurred to me then that when Pluto is invoked for removal of obstacles, what is removed is never completely occluded. It's sort of either/or, and you tend to get something bigger than you bargained for.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Salty Tiny Pony

From "Sic Transit" (4)

C made fun of my white Polack socks as a way of engaging my shame. But I was able to remain myself for most of those moments because it occurred to me that the real work was not to change the socks — change the mind and the socks will change themselves. It was ridiculous how many changes even my jeans had been through with him. It was ridiculous, the waste of so many moments. The source of my darkness was just my own dullness. I for whom all things should've been attainable had chosen the path of my resistance. The difference between the wild, precious life I'd chosen in Eternity and my life with C was just the watered-down fact of "how it stands": someone — me — didn't fulfill her promise, and so someone — not me — was living her life the way I should've been living mine. It was probably Madonna.

Suddenly I felt like the teenage me, sketching still-lifes of peaches on Saturdays at the Back-of-the-Yards Art Academy. And then I knew what I had to do. Any escape would be ascent because now I had peaches to protect. "Defenestrate this master," said the voice in my head.

The next time I saw C I was able to ignore him, because my only thought seemed to be "Are red Keds really sexy?"... to be continued

The Beautiful

"The Beautiful is everywhere, perhaps more in the arrangement of your saucepans on the white walls of your kitchen than in the eighteenth-century living room or in the official museums." -- Fernand Leger